A Lovely Houseguest
I didn’t write a newsletter yesterday because, as I mentioned last Thursday, E’s sister, Far, was in town for the weekend. Far lives in Hawai’i, so it was pretty strange to have her be able to pop over to Berlin for a couple of days.
On Maui, Far and her partner are caretakers for an elderly Finnish woman’s property. Their employer wanted to visit friends and family in Finland (and a couple of other places in Europe) this summer and asked Far to come along as her companion. So, Far spent two weeks driving an old lady all over Finland and then came to see us for a couple of days before heading to Paris to meet up with her employer again. Far was excited to spend some time with people who weren’t in their eighties and we prioritized biking and walking around Berlin as much as the rainy weather would allow.
I had worried that Far’s visit might be awkward for several reasons - for starters, the three of us couldn’t remember the last time we’d seen each other! Would we all still get along? But, more importantly, COVID numbers are pretty high in Berlin (the seven day incidence is 72.2) and E and I have only been fully vaccinated for a week now. We just really weren’t sure what we’d feel comfortable doing. Would Far be disappointed if we didn’t go out to eat or visit any of the crowded touristy spots?
My worrying was unnecessary (title of my memoir, am I right?) because, regardless of the pandemic, everyone likes to do different things when they travel. And it’s much more important to cater a trip to the traveler’s interests than it is to check off a bunch of ‘must-see’ tourist attractions.
Far is a farmer who lives in rural Hawai’i so we focused on enjoying Berlin’s green spaces. We biked around Tempelhofer Feld and through a few other parks hunting for geocaches (we found 9!). We walked through the many Kleingärten in our neighborhood, grazing on fruits that hung over people’s fences (it’s not stealing if it’s reachable from a public path…), and we enjoyed several homecooked meals.
Far saw a very particular version of Berlin based around her interests, our current life here, and, yes, pandemic safety. If she’d visited us a few years ago, it would have been a very different trip. And when she visits us again someday, our lives and that trip will look different than they do right now. Travel experiences are ephemeral like that.